Curing the health care crisis

The main ones, according to health policy expert John C. Goodman, were cost, quality and access to care.

Unless something is done, all three of those problems will get worse as a result of the Affordable Care Act, predicts Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis and author of the new book "Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis."

That's why Goodman, the keynote speaker at AWB's Health Care Forum Nov. 6 in Seattle, believes that Congress will eventually be forced to make major changes to the law.

If it was up to Goodman, the first change would be to repeal the individual and employer mandates and replace them with generous tax subsidies that people could use to obtain insurance. Then he would give people the freedom and flexibility to adjust their benefits and cost-sharing in order control costs.

Goodman would also:

Change what he describes as a "bizarre system" of subsidies -- one that offers radically different subsidies to people at the same income level based on where they obtain their health insurance -- and offer everyone the same relief.

Remove the "perverse incentives" for insurers and employers to attract the healthy and avoid the sick by making a high-cost enrollee just as attractive to an insurer as a low-cost enrollee.

Likewise, remove the "perverse incentive" for healthy people to remain uninsured and later enroll in a health plan after they get sick.

Goodman, who is known as the father of Health Savings Accounts, believes generally that patients should be given more control over their health care, and that providers should be allowed to compete on things like quality and price rather than government bureaucracies dictating choices to consumers.

"Let the supply side of the market compete," he told Olympia Business Watch.